


What's Worth Waiting For

by kyaticlikestea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Comedy, Humor, Humour, M/M, OFC - Freeform, OMC - Freeform, Romantic Comedy, age difference feels, several years, six-legged bloodsucking fairy, slight angst, slow burning relationship, sterek, wow that wasn't already a tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyaticlikestea/pseuds/kyaticlikestea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles Stilinski, sixteen year old male with dubious control of his motor functions and frontal lobe, gets pretty used to rejection, but still won't take 'no' for an answer.</p><p>
  <i>“You don’t even like me,” Derek states, voice even. He’s doing that thing again, that thing that Stiles hates, arranging his features into a perfect mask of stoicism. Stiles is torn between kissing and killing him. That’s not even the most annoying thing. The worst thing is that Derek still doesn’t see.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Dude,” says Stiles. “I was willing to cut someone’s arm off for you!”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Derek blinks.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It was my arm,” he retorts.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Worth Waiting For

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lifevolutionary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifevolutionary/gifts).



The first time Stiles decides to hit on Derek Hale, he is sixteen years old and decidedly and unfortunately sober. They’ve just managed to outrun some sort of weird fairy-like thing that had taken a shine to Stiles – well, to be completely accurate, to Stiles’ blood, which offends Stiles because he’s always thought his eyes were his best feature - and they’re safe now, breathless and panting, backs pressed against the front door of the Hale house. Stiles wonders when his entire life went to shit. He thinks it was probably around the time his best friend was savaged by a werewolf, but honestly, things had been going downhill for a while before that. Life sucks when you’re a gangly smartmouth with a soul-destroying crush on the girl of everyone’s dreams.

He swallows, trying to encourage air into his lungs so he can get back to that ever-important task of actually breathing. Derek looks at him strangely. Stiles would sigh if he had the respiratory capability.

“What?” he says. “We’re not all wolfmen with abs of steel, you know. I just ran about six hundred miles. Cut me some slack.”

Derek simply raises an eyebrow, his breathing rate already almost back to normal, and Stiles could weep with the unfairness of it all. Firstly, why are the blood-sucking things always after him? He doesn’t even have enough muscle mass on him to make a Stiles steak sandwich. He reckons he could get a mixed grill platter from just one of Derek’s biceps. Maybe he’ll suggest that to the next cannibal they come across. It would save him a lot of hassle in the long-run, too. No more pouty werewolves to deal with. Apart from Scott, of course, whose time of the month could rival Lydia’s.

“You do realise that you’re saying all that aloud, don’t you?” Derek says flatly, and no, Stiles hadn’t. He shrugs. He can almost breathe again.

“It happens,” he replies. “Not a great fan of silence. I haven’t been able to speak for a good ten minutes, and you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Derek huffs, and Stiles is more than mildly surprised to see the faint trace of a smile on his lips. For something that’s so unusual and new, it doesn’t look out of place. It suits him, actually, and that revelation is the first in a quick chain of realisations that culminate in Stiles making an error that’s equivalent to Georgia’s attempted invasion of Russia. The second revelation is that Stiles would quite like to ensure the permanent presence of that smile on Derek’s face. The third revelation is that, smile or no smile, Derek’s mouth is really quite nice. The fourth revelation is that adrenaline is one hell of a drug.

He doesn’t even think about it, just sort of leans over and presses his lips onto Derek’s quickly enough that even werewolf reflexes can’t help the other man, and for the brief millisecond that his lips are there, Stiles swears he can hear swelling violins and Celine Dion and kittens and all that shit.

The violent shove to his chest cuts that off, though. Stiles falls backwards, eyes almost as wide as Derek’s, which, alarmingly, seem to be glowing faintly red.

“What the hell, dude?” Stiles exhales, shoulder aching. He rubs it tentatively and winces. Yep. Definitely going to bruise. “Talk about overreacting.”

“You don’t even like me,” Derek states, voice even. He’s doing that thing again, that thing that Stiles hates, arranging his features into a perfect mask of stoicism. Stiles is torn between kissing and killing him. That’s not even the most annoying thing. The worst thing is that Derek still doesn’t see.

“Dude,” says Stiles. “I was willing to _cut someone’s arm off_ for you!”

Derek blinks.

“It was my arm,” he retorts.

“And your idea!”

Derek sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. On Derek, it’s practically an anguished howl of irritation.

“You’re sixteen years old, Stiles,” he sighs.

Stiles doesn’t even know where to go with that. Yeah, he’s sixteen, but he’s also been hunted by werewolves, kanimas, crazy old guys with guns and a six-legged bloodsucking fairy, so he’s pretty sure he’s had the life experience of an eighty year old by now. He’s taking advanced level algebra and sometimes he likes to phone into TV opinion shows and berate the stupidity of the younger generations because the younger generation don’t generally give a shit about what he has to say. He doesn’t really know how to verbalise that, though. He’s almost dismayed to find that he didn’t accidentally blurt it all out.

“I’m legal in England,” he finally manages to say, and Derek just laughs quietly.

“That’s not the issue,” he says. He fixes Stiles with a stern glare. It would have more effect if it weren’t Derek’s default expression, Stiles thinks. “You’re sixteen. You have no idea what you want.”

Stiles has always hated that assumption. Like adults know what they want any more than sixteen year olds. His dad is forever buying new TVs and returning them the next day because he changed his mind. Scott’s mum frequently cooks two meals for dinner and then shoves one in the freezer because she can’t decide between spaghetti and lasagne. Indecision is not a teenage thing. It’s a human thing. But then Derek isn’t exactly human.

“How do you know?” Stiles bites back. He thinks he sees something shift in Derek’s expression, something small and dark worm its way to the front of his mind and weigh heavy on his lips, forcing a frown, but he blinks and Derek’s face is blank again.

“I was sixteen once, you know,” says Derek. He stands up, resting on his haunches and pushing himself up with no effort at all, and turns away. “You should go home. Your dad will start worrying.”

He’s gone before Stiles can protest, disappeared into some shadowy room in a haunted house, and Stiles doesn’t much fancy going after him. He also doesn’t like the idea of walking alone through woods that are home to a vampire fairy, however, so he sends his dad a quick text to explain that he’s spending the night at Scott’s, sends Scott a text to tell him about his false alibi, and finds a room that’s not too full of shadows and ghosts to settle down in for the night.

His breathing doesn’t return to normal for a good while. Derek must hear him, even a non-werewolf would hear, but he doesn’t come back to kick him out. Stiles stays and waits.

He gets used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to all of you who are subscribed to my WIP fics. They WILL all be completed soon, I promise! I'm doing them all gradually. I've started back at university and it's hard to find the time to write things that aren't for my course. This fic idea had been burning for a while so I wanted to get it out of my brain! Thanks for your patience :)


End file.
